Kelly McParland: Alberta gets its rats

Alberta gets its rats

You may see something amusing in the notion of a mature province of 3.6 million people losing its collective cool over the discovery or a small colony of rats in the southern end of the province, but, then, you wouldn’t be an Albertan.

Albertans take their rats very seriously. Or, to be more precise, they take their lack of rats very seriously. Like Ireland with its snakes (of which there supposedly aren’t any), Alberta takes considerable pride in having no rats. Not the furry little kind with long tails, anyway.

I don’t know how they keep them out — some kind of electronic device along the borders with Saskatchewan and B.C. I guess, that can detect rats and zap them before they scurry across. And Obama probably has drones coded to seek out and destroy raticus americanus with a super-secret laser or heat-seeking missile or something, as soon as they hit northern Montana.

However they do it, they’re almost as proud of being rat-free as they are of being richer and smarter than the rest of us, having been smart enough to discover oil a long time ago. So there was a great surge of alarm in August when a colony of the critters was discovered in a Medicine Hat landfill. It was such a big deal, Alberta’s agriculture minister Verlyn Olson (only in Alberta do people still have names like Verlyn) journeyed to the scene to unveil the news himself. Nineteen rats — yes, exactly 19 — had been found, he revealed.

“The rats were found on August 9 and all have been killed, but officials are worried there could be more,” the Globe and Mail reported at the time.

But wait a minute. Verlyn may have spoken too soon. According to the Calgary Herald, only this week did Alberta’s rat authorities complete the eradication of the nest. I could paraphrase the report for you, but it’s so much fun you should read it for yourself. (I will, however, and with due accreditation, quote extensively from it):

CALGARY — After a two-month battle, Alberta’s rat patrol believes it has eradicated a massive colony following an infestation that garnered international headlines

….On Tuesday, after weeks of setting up poisonous bait traps, tracking the rodents using infrared cameras, and meticulously killing and destroying each rat that crossed their paths, workers finally ripped the colony to shreds.After betting and wagering on what they would find inside, the team breathed a sigh of relief to discover no live rats, said Ed Jollymore, Medicine Hat’s manager of solid waste utility.

“This is one of the pivotal phases,” Jollymore said. “This was confirmation. This was giving us the comfort that yes, we indeed had killed them.”

He said it took six hours for 21 workers and two excavators to dismantle the den, “bucketful by bucketful, metre by metre.”

The first rats were found in Medicine Hat at the beginning of August, threatening Alberta’s rat-free status.

The body count started at four, and quickly soared with the discovery of more rats in the landfill, within the city, and in the county, now sitting at 149. Bait traps were immediately set up.

As the animals were discovered within other areas of the city and the county, poisoned hay bales were set up around the city in a strategy known as Operation Haystack.

Eventually, as rat activity ceased near the end of August, the rat patrol started planning a plan to decimate the colony, which was finally carried out on Tuesday.

Though justifiably chuffed with his victory, Jollymore warned that continued vigilance is necessary, and an investigation will take place into the source of the rats. If I wasn’t a charitable soul, I’d suggest he keep an eye on those Montanans, who may have got a mistaken notion as to what free trade is all about. But keep an eye out for the drones.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.